#368: Knit Wits

For three years my mother lived in the Dementia Unit of the very retirement home where I volunteer. That floor is now known as Memory Care, but I am not fooled by the softer overtones of this more benign term.  Memory loss, whatever you call it, terrifies me.  I started to read Still Alice and couldn't finish it; I will probably never see the movie Away From Her.

But that doesn't mean that I wasn't interested yesterday when 84-year old Hetty, one of my dear, spunky retirement home readers, told me that she had been tested for Alzheimer's.

What? 

I asked her about it and she proceeded to describe the battery of tasks and questions used to detect the disease:  draw a clock face that shows 10 minutes to 11; give today's date, month and year; give your age and birth date; count back from 100 by 7s; recall the three items named earlier....

Surely someone who can itemize the details of a test for Alzheimer's passed it.  I wondered why they bothered to test Hetty in the first place.  We speculated that every resident was being tested.  I had just come from another part of the building where everyone who used a scooter was being given a driver's test.  Perhaps it is the "screening season".

However, thanks to Hetty, if I ever get screened I will know what to expect and I will be prepared. I can start right now practicing subtraction by 7's.  Math was never my best subject.

But it might be more to the point if I just kept on with a new knitting project. 

It appears that knitting  (or any kind of crafting or creative pursuit) is faaabulous for the brain. A recent item from CNN Health  enthuses about its extraordinary benefits. It is relaxing, it stimulates neural activity, and releases dopamine. The zen state that accompanies a period of intense concentration while we figure out a tricky pattern is as good as meditation.  Don't knock us knitting grannies.  We are doing more than making mittens. We are engaged in dementia prevention and enjoying a perfectly legal knitter's high.

Hetty has always been a knitter.  Last winter she made so many frilly scarves that she got sick of them. 

One frilly scarf = lots of new neurons + great satisfaction

She passed the Alzheimer's test, of course. "With flying colours!" she assured me.

I never doubted it.  I'm sure all that knitting gave her an edge.
 
     

                           

#356: Proof

It's done! Ready to wear!

.  Now all we need is the baby.

We won't have long to wait either.  Erik and parents arrive this week from Saskatoon.  But it is hot and humid in Ontario right now, so I 'll let him save the sweater and pants (an end of season bargain) for fall.

 ***

When I've not been piecing the pullover together, and baby-proofing the house, I've been slowly working on the visit-to-London travel blog.  This is the latest addition: London: Must-See Museums (and Galleries).

#352: The Last Giraffe: a Knitted Tale/Tail

The horrible truth about intarsia knitting was revealed when Bruce and I went on our cross-country, friends-and-family road trip last summer. I had packed wool in four colours, needles, and the giraffe pullover pattern.  A pumped-up, grandma-in-waiting, I was pretty sure that if I knitted in the evenings (in motels) and in the car (as a passenger) during the daytime, I would be returning to Guelph after five weeks with an adorable finished garment, all ready for the new baby.

Or perhaps not.

Dorothy, my mother-in-law (and Goddess of Intarsia), must have been appalled as she looked down from her heavenly rocking chair at Nancy the naive knitter.  She would have recognized that I was lacking in so many skills that would have made pattern-knitting easier. I was unable to finesse the many strands of wool necessary to create the pattern.  I got lost trying to follow the instructions.  I couldn't count the stitches accurately. And I was far too distractable.  Did I really think I could simultaneously count Nevada roadside prisons and the correct number of stitches for a good-looking little yellow tail?

In fact, I briefly toyed with the idea of re-defining "correct".  Bruce, who watched me knit and rip and curse, and re-knit legs and spots and tail from Canada to California and back, actually encouraged me to fudge a little.   "What is the correct appearance for a tail?"  he argued.  "Why can't a spot be fatter or thinner?"  And I did briefly try to incorporate my mistakes into the body of the giraffe.  But it didn't look right.  And it didn't feel right either. I didn't want to pretend that my errors were deliberate. And I knew it wouldn't work, anyway: I would know. I recalled that my mother (a knitting dabbler, unlike Dorothy) once attempted one of those intarsia-knitted cutsie-sweaters for me.  The pattern showed two large, white geese on a navy background.  When she had completed the sweater, she passed it to me, looked at it, and then took it back.  "I can't give this to you", she said.  "I've forgotten a goose."

I returned from our trip last September with a completed sweater-back, the first few rows of the front, and many, many ragged little skeins of wool that had been knitted, torn out, and re-knitted in my 20-or-so attempts at the giraffe.  I needed a break, and the giraffe must have been exhausted too;  I put us both out of our misery and stuffed my unsuccessful effort into my workbasket.  I knitted a tiny, pattern-free sweater for my grandchild-to-be.  I forgot about the impossible pullover.

Gaaaagh.  The back side of a patterned sweater is scary.

Then, months later, I got an email from my friend Sandra.  There she was, gamely knitting an entire patterned baby blanket (and fixing her mistakes) with her arthritic fingers wrapped in paper tape.  Her grandson was yet unborn, but she already loved him that much.  

I thought of Baby Erik.  At five months he is so sweet, and he would look adorable wearing the giraffe sweater. So I got it out for the 21st time, and I resolved to pay attention and knit like Dorothy. I obsessively counted rows and recorded them.  I turned off the TV when I was knitting the tricky tail. Soon I had a giraffe-shape that looked passably like the pattern, and even though the sweater front is not quite complete, I am confidently near the finish line.  I am quite certain that this really is the last giraffe.

I can see it! A giraffe!

And on my way to rudimentary intarsia competence, I have learned a thing or two:  knitting is not just about technique.  It is, like so many things, about learning, and re-doing, going back, and trying to get it right eventually.  It is about doing your best, even if you fall short.

And when a grandmother knits, it is certainly about love.

#351: Grandmothers Knit

Thanks to lefthandedtoons.com!

While I disagree with many of the "granny" stereotypes, the one about knitting holds true.  A lot of retired women knit.  Some have been knitters their entire lives, others take up knitting as a late-life hobby and some (like me) rediscover this relaxing, creative activity after a long non-knitting hiatus.   

OK.  I made up the "relaxing, creative" part.

When I knit I am somewhat creative, but never relaxed, because something always goes wrong.  I am forever fixing mistakes, and I am not the only one.  My friend Sandra recently admitted that she was not very far along with the baby blanket intended for her new grandchild, when a major pattern error was detected. It took her three hours to work back to the offending row and re-knit it.  She had to un-knit (reverse) over 800 complicated stitches, one by one by one by one by one......you get the idea.

But if knitting is so much work, why do older women do it?   They knit for people they love, of course, but it is clear to me that they also knit because they have the time. They have the time to un-knit, unravel, and start all over again. They have the time to learn,   And this is especially true for older, novice knitters,  We know that knitting even a simple washcloth or a scarf presents wooly challenges with every stitch.  The struggle to "get it right" is nothing if not time-consuming.

So last summer, when I went shopping at All Strung Out, why did I think I could quickly whip up a pullover sweater for my first grandchild, expected in November?  A patterned pullover, no less.  A giraffe pattern. I must have been pumped up by grandmotherly endorphins, the same rush of affection that no doubt prompted Sandra to say yes to that baby blanket in spite of her severely arthritic fingers. We both must have been thrilled at the prospect of the new babies. That is the only way I can explain my confidence.  "Of course I can knit a patterned sweater with four little legs, a tail, spots and ears.  No problem!"  I told myself as I chose cheerful giraffe colours. That I had no experience knitting even the simplest picture-pattern did not feature in my decision at all.   

Soon I was watching YouTube as a skilled knitter demonstrated how to knit a red heart into the middle of white square.  I learned the word "intarsia".  And I began to suspect that my giraffe project would be the knitting equivalent of hiking up Kilimanjaro.  

When considered the possible difficulties, I began asking my knitting friends about this technique of creating an inlaid pattern in wool.  Do this: ask the knitters you know.  They will be impressed by your vocabulary, and you will discover, as I did, that workbaskets the world over hold unfinished intarsia projects.  Ducks.  Boats.  A Merry Go Round! (Now there was a confident knitter.  She told me that the pattern drove her crazy. She ripped it out twice, gave up, and made a striped sweater instead.)

But how hard could it be?  Really?  Once upon a time, patterned sweaters were all the rage, and plenty of them were hand-knitted.  Remember Bill Cosby and his TV wardrobe of colourful sweaters created by New Zealanders?  Or Mary Maxim sweaters, with their iconic masculine designs?  County-cute sweaters featuring apple trees, barns and farm animals?  If we were lucky, a grandmother knit up one of these beauties for us or our children.  Back in 1988, it never crossed my mind that my mother-in-law Dorothy might have found it difficult to knit a "country house" sweater for me, or a "frolicking sheep" sweater for one of my daughters.  Oh, Dorothy, please forgive me.  I had no idea. 

My struggle to learn intarsia has, indeed, been so monumental that I missed the November deadline and finally put the giraffe out to pasture.  Just for a bit. The sweater is for a year-old baby, after all, so in theory I still have time to finish it.  If I choose to accept the challenge once more, I will have 7 months to figure it out, pattern and all.

Sigh. Let the knitting begin. Again.

Now that I am committed once more to the patterned pullover, I am filled with admiration for my mother-in-law and the sheep sweater.  I recently examined it, and marveled at its complicated design.  It is a beautiful sweater with an intricate, bobbled, sheep-surface.  That pattern could have come with a warning: Experienced Knitters Only.  But the sweater is not perfect.  When I look at the sleeves, I can see that they are not identical: there is a missing row of decorative triangles. *Gasp*  Did Dorothy know? I don't think so. Had she noticed that little mistake, she would have felt compelled to rip out the entire arm and begin again--a knitter's nightmare.

Dorothy's beautiful, imperfect sweater

As I prepare to wrestle with my giraffe, I am glad to consider Dorothy's sleeve.  It is a reminder of how much time, and work and love is expended on a small thing like a child's sweater.  It makes me feel connected to her, and a whole host of optimistic, knitting grandmothers. 

I picture my sweet grand baby.  I mentally dress him in the cosy green, yellow and brown pullover. I can knit this. I have the time.  I'll just channel Dorothy, and start all over again with the four little legs.